The present invention relates to a portable type geographic data collecting system, and in particular, relates to a geographic data collecting system, by which it is possible to acquire an image data of a measuring point, to specify the measuring point in the image, to perform measurement, etc. while visually confirming the measuring point, and to collect the measurement result together with the image data.
In recent years, a navigation system using an electronic map has been propagated. The navigation system is provided on vehicles or provided on handy phones (cellular phones) as additional function and is used.
With the propagation of the navigation system, geographic data required for electronic map has also been increasingly diversified, and there are strong demands on more precise and minute geographic data and on symbol marks, 3-dimensional images, etc. which should be added to the map to facilitate visual checking.
For instance, in order to collect geographic data to be transferred on an electronic map, operators must go to an operation site and must take images of public buildings, telephone poles, public telephones, etc., which serves as signs and marks, by using an image pickup unit such as a camera and the images are acquired.
To transfer the data to the map, coordinate data on ground surface is required. For the purpose of acquisition of the data on positions of buildings or telephone poles and positions of public telephones, an object to be measured is performed conventionally by surveying instruments and systems.
In the past, as a measuring system for acquiring an image on an object to be measured and for conveniently measuring a position of the object to be measured, a system described in the Japanese Patent Publication JP-A-2004-317237 has been known.
The measuring system described in JP-A-2004-317237 comprises a GPS (Global Positioning System), and it is possible to continuously perform measurement on topography and on objects on the ground surface without using reference points. The measuring system comprises an image pickup device and performs matching of an image taken with a result of surveying, and coordinate data with the image can be acquired.
By the measuring system as described above, measurement data and image data can be acquired with high accuracy. For the geographic data to be transferred to the electronic map, very high accuracy for the map is not required. To acquire geographic data by the measuring system, the measuring system is moved sequentially and is installed at a position as necessary. However, for the acquisition of the geographic data, many processes are required such as measurement of a distance to the object to be measured, measurement of a vertical angle, measurement of a horizontal angle, taking of an image, matching of the image with the measurement data, etc. This is not suitable for the case where many geographic data must be acquired within short time.
A portable type distance measuring system is described in the JP-A-2002-39748 as a distance measuring system for convenient measurement of distance. Because this portable type distance measuring system is not provided with an image pickup device, and it is difficult to specify a measuring point on an object to be measured. Because an image of the object to be measured cannot be acquired, for the purpose of acquiring geographic data to be transferred to an electronic map, it is necessary to acquire an image separately by using an image pickup device. As a result, complicated procedure such as matching the acquired images with measurement data are needed.